In aprior entryI introduced you to Brazilian experiments with constructing homes using PET bottles. Today I’ll introduce you to Andreas Froese, a man who not only did it first in Honduras, but has gone much beyond the experimental stages to actually build over a dozen homes and community centers made of PET bottles, as well as water cisterns, bus stop benches and even a replica of a Roman aqueduct.

The next entry in the Temas Blog will be a guest blog from Andreas himself, discussing the challenges he faced in putting together these projects and the lessons learned that can be applied by those contemplating similar projects in other Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) nations.

CCAD award

An Award-Winning Eco-Firm with a Social Purpose

The Central American Commission on Environment and Development (Comisión Centroamericana de Ambiente y Desarrollo – CCAD) recently announced the 2006 recipients of the “Award for Environmental Innovation in Central America” to publicly recognize regional experiments in eco-innovation. The CCAD is the intergovernmental institution in charge of coordinating policy work on natural resources and the environment among the nations of the Central American Integration System (Sistema de la Integración Centroamericana – SICA). The biennial Awards were launched in 2002 to prompt greater interest in the seven nations (Belize, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, Panama) in ecodesign, cleaner production, and promoting energy efficiency and greater use of renewable energy sources. Sponsors of the prize include USAID and the governments of Finland and the Netherlands.

The 2006 recipient for “innovation in sustainable products (ecodesign)” [innovación de productos sostenibles (ecodiseño)] was a small Honduran firm, Eco-tec, for construction of water tanks (cisterns, or cisternas as they are known in Spanish) using “trash” (recycled materials). This was the second time Eco-tec won the CCAD award: the first, in 2002, was for transforming a Honduran farm into a tourist center and center for training in the application of “clean” technologies.

Eco-tec is the brainchild of Andreas Froese, a German who has made Honduras his home for over a dozen years. Although technically a for-profit firm, all Eco-tec projects have a strong social focus. The structures built using wasted materials, for example, have not only taught communities lessons about the economic value of such materials and the utility of recycling them, but also trained the poor and/or handicapped in useful and employable design and construction techniques and skills while providing cheap but attractive housing, bus stops, kiosks, community centers and even a “book house” (mini-library).

Building with “Trash”

Froese, a construction worker in his native Germany, originally worked primarily in eco-tourism in early years in his new home, Honduras. He came up with the idea of using “trash” as construction material while helping clean up an eco-park after Semana Santa in 2000. He saw the huge quantities of nonreturnable beverage containers (primarily PET soft drink bottles) collected, and wondered how to convert them into useful inputs or end-products. Thus Eco-tec was born.

All images courtesy of Eco-tec

As can be seen in the picture to the right, some 70% of the structures built by Eco-tec consist of PET bottles recovered in clean-up campaigns and recycling drives, and then filled with sand and sealed.

Froese insists that the filled PET bottles make a tougher, more durable construction material than common concrete blocks used in most Central American building. He offers a video on his website of a worker pounding on a filled bottle with a hammer to prove it. He points out that PET can last as long as 300 years (undoubtedly longer than the cement used to bind the bottles together in the walls!).

Also heavily used in Eco-tec’s construction projects are end-of-life vehicle wheel rims (rines), which often form the core of building columns, but sometimes serve as the baseline of walls as well.

“Casas Ecológicas” Made with PET

The following three pictures (click on each thumbnail to see a larger version) are of Eco-tec’s casa ecológica (“ecological house”) constructed in Honduras using some 8,000 PET bottles, in the process freeing up an estimated 12 cubic meters (m3) in the local landfill.

The house also features a “living roof” (sometimes called a “green roof”) of sod and turf. Such roofs not only have aesthetic appeal, but tend to insulate the house better than conventional roofs, lowering heating and cooling costs. They are also cheaper than conventional roofs.

When wet, the 102 square meter (m2) living roof of the casa ecológica can weigh as much as 30 metric tons (Mt, toneladas). The PET bottle walls can support the weight.

The following four thumbnails (click on each to see a larger version) are from a larger project, Casa de la Fé (“Faith House”), intended to provide shelter for all visitors coming to town seeking treatment at the Honduran Foundation for the Rehabilitation and Integration of the Handicapped (Fundación Hondureña de Rehabilitación e Integración del Limitado – FUHRIL).

This colorful structure is Campo Cielo, which reputedly has the world’s first roof made of PET bottles. It also has several mosaics made of bottle caps. The fellow on the right in the middle picture is Andreas.

“Water for All” — Cisterns Made of PET Bottles for Marginal Communities

The following pictures (click on each to see a larger version) are examples of the cisterns built using sand-filled PET bottles as the primary construction material. One of these pictured here is a 3,500 liter cistern built at a school, with the help of the school children — a hands-on lesson in both recycling and the building trade. It was just such a project that won Eco-tec this year’s CCAD Environmental Innovation Award.

Other Types of Structures Made with Scrap Soda Bottles

The picture at right (click to enlarge) is one of the bus stop benches Eco-tec built in a city using handicapped workers. The project intended in part to demonstrated to the community that almost any type of urban infrastructure could be built using PET bottles.

As mentioned above, Eco-tec has also used PET bottles in the construction of kiosks, a casa de libros, and a whimsical project — a replica of a Roman aqueduct. It has also demonstrated that “camping igloos” three meters in diameter and just over two meters high could be mass produced as temporary housing in times of natural disasters using only 2000 plastic bottles per “igloo.”

What Next?

Eco-tec is currently experimenting with the use of bamboo as a construction material, while Andreas himself is working to bring Eco-tec’s style of eco-social project to Colombia.

47 Responses to “More Construction with PET Bottles”

I’ve shown the PET houses to several people. Everyone is amazed. One person wanted to know about the fire hazard involved in building with plastic. Can you comment on this please?
Yours,
Deborah Rubin Fields

Interesting question! I suppose that if fire reached the PET bottles inside the walls the burning plastic would emit toxic fumes. But it would first have to get through the concrete cement used to cover and bind the bottles, or reach a part of the wall where this has been chipped away to expose the bottles. Possible? Certainly. Probable? Not very, not often.

I lived for 4 years in Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic. One of the reasons Dominicans used concrete and cinder blocks, they argued, was that with such building materials they had few house-engulfing fires. In fact, home fires were rare, almost unheard of, and always limited to the piece of furniture or appliance that caught fire.

I suppose that, given a high enough temperature, the PET bottles inside Andreas’ structures would soften or even melt within the walls. But any temperature high enough to do that would be far too dangerous for people to still be inside the structure and still be alive.

Let’s bear in mind that (so far, at least) all these PET bottle-reinforced structures have been made for poor communities. Many of these communities cannot afford cinder block or Portland cement on their own, so they would build their homes with wood (sometimes even sticks or cardboard), which is far more flammable and less sturdy.

Hope that helps. If you wish, I can pass on the question to Andreas and ask him to comment as well. I’d also be interested if anyone else has thoughts on this.

You’re kidding?
The concrete actually binds firmly to PET bottles?
The coefficients of expansion aren’t hideously mismatched?
Are the PET bottles filled with anything (homespun fiberglass or industrial dross…unpotable water…) or just an inward-facing vapor barrier that is cured before the roof is loaded?

Fire risks are minimal, as a fire hot enough to degrade PET will generally slowly charcoal it; it’s right around treated wood as a risk…unless it -is- unpotable water and industrial waste they’re filled with.

I love the idea of using this stuff as sectional roof insulation, but the RF feedthroughs (since it’s an insulator, and thus no good for HDTV reception) and junk are a pain. It’s also no good if fire could meld sections, making it harder for firemen to open the roof.

This is also adorable for the obligatory cartoon of elderly indians alternately complaining at their grandkids that they didn’t have PET bottles building pyramids in their day, or drinking from stones (cola! fah!)

Hi Steve, welcome to The Temas Blog, I hope you visit & comment often. You ask great questions.

I love the image of grandparents complaining about not using PET bottles to build pyramids in their day — that one made me spill my coffee laughing!

As I understand it, yes, the concrete does bind to the bottles — how Andreas does it, I’m not 100% certain. Also, I don’t know if he leaves the bottles in the roof structure with air or some other filling rather than the sand he uses in the bottles comprising the walls — the latter would make the roof rather heavy, wouldn’t it?

If you wish, I can relay your questions/observations to Andreas in Spanish (he is more comfortable in Spanish or German than English), and see what he has to say, which I can post here in the comments for all. Let me know.

Hi,
I live in Arizona, and would love to get more information on how to build with PET bottles. Can you direct me to the website, or any other sites that may have information on how to build with these materials.
thanks,

Christylyn Hess:
Here in the US, we get to look at the photos and google more, observe that they variously filled the bottles with whatever they didn’t need to plant in; then try to make methods and models of construction with them, that meet the US Fire Codes and will meet with engineers’ approval for the intended uses.

There is a tradition of having empirical test models that have been tested to determinate failure points, for buildings with commercial uses (thus, often including private homes anyhow.) I do not eagerly want to repeat any work done here…. But a fellow at a firm in town set up 2-column stadium supports using mostly modeling (and perspiration,) so it’s easy enough if only you can characterize what you’re going to fill the bottles with. It strikes me that this work has surely been done -and- modeled in MathCAD or ComSol already…. I will let you know here if I strike a vein of useful disourse….

Hi,
Thanks for your reply, I am planning to build a storage shed, and the zoning codes here allow you to build up to 200 sq. ft without a permit. Since I do not need to get a permit, I was looking for a very inexpensive way to build, with recycled materials. Your website is really the only one I can find about using the bottles in this manner. Is there any specific instruction manuals or any other information on how to build structures in this manner? or do you have more photos you can email me directly? Thank you so much I really love your work.
Christylyn

Actually, Christylyn, I hadn’t had a chance to respond to you yet, and Steve is just a reader and in no way speaks for me or The Temas Blog.

I don’t know that Andreas has written an instruction manual — I’ll email him and ask. I’ve been meaning to email him anyway, and find out how his project in Colombia is going and whether he can guest blog again.

As for photos, you can find quite a few, plus a couple of short videos, on Eco-tec’s website at the link provided in the article that I’ll repeat here: http://www.eco-tecnologia.com/

Hi Im Mustafa from Turkey Ankara. Ive just read your details about buildings which are made from Pet Bottles and I would like to introduce our company by giving you our web adres http://www.europet.com.tr we are the first and the only company in Turkey who makes construction materials from pet bottles and would like to talk and meet with you in order to make something together.

Hi Jose. I don’t know that any country has officially adopted or endorsed this method for their housing (yet). I do know that Andreas has built these in Honduras, Colombia and Bolivia, I suspect that’s only the start. As to actual cost, I’d better let Andreas answer that. But given the low or non cost of the main building material (post-consumer PET bottles), likely quite low. More a matter of the cost of the cement and manpower.

we need abaut 50-60 % less than normal construccion cost in our buildings,because we use much less cement.
Until this time there are buildings in Honduras Colombia y Bolivia but I am ready to travel any country
nice day

I understand that the “casa ecologica” was built with some 8,000 bottles and I only have one simple question to make:
where do you get so many bottles??

I am thinking to use this technique for a project in Angola but I am struggling with the fact that we won’t be able to get enough bottles to build 100m2 houses for the entire community.

A recyclable program before construction starts could be an idea but I do not believe this will work with these type of communities. And the thought of collecting some 80,000 bottles may scare the community straight away.

How well do structures made of PET bottles hold up against earthquakes? I live in the Philippines, which is in a very seismically active region. I have heard of one local initiative to construct school buildings out of used PET bottles. I was wondering if this is appropriate given the situation in our country.

hi..i was wondering if the spacing of the plastics would affect the strength of the structure made of dirt filled PET bottles? how do you test the bearing capacity, compressive strength of that thing? is axial loading necessary ? is it the same as testing a solid concrete beam from ASTM? why is there a need for caps to cover the bottles how would uncovered bottles affect the strength? do you have to compute the unit weight of the mud/dirt/soil and bottles just incase the structure has a 2nd floor (in the design you need to compute the dead load of the beams/slabs/columns right?) when designing do we treat these bottle bricks just like CHB?

Hi Andreas
I wonder if there are possibilities for conducting a short course in case someone come over to you in Germany? I’m interested in such projects and would be my pleasure to get some skills in it.

Hola, I’m a Peace Corps volunteer working in Mexico in sustainable community development. I love your houses – this concept is so new in Mexico I want and need to start with something simple. Simply a PET recycling container made of PET bottles. I saw one somewhere and didn’t have my camera – it was elegant – it appeared that the bottles were attached with wire – head to toe – so they fit snugly. It was pretty, useful and most of all it can be a model to people about how useful PET can be. The Mexicans are very thrifty and innovative – but they need a few ideas to get them going. Have you seen one of these? Can you give me some me some tips on constructing it? Would you happen to have any pictures of this or something similar? Gracias! Anne

Unfortunately humans consume more than they you need and produces more waste than the environment can handle, so recycling becomes something important today. I already knew several ways to reuse PET bottles, but this idea of using them in place of bricks had never seen before and I confess that I found innovative because, as said in the post, these bottles last longer than the common material, a super intelligent attitudte is responsible., Iin addition to decreasing cost, it helps in the amount of garbage into the environment, making the world we live in more pleasant and less inhabited by garbage. These ideas should be disseminated and used all over the world, so that everyone contributes to the preservation of all nature.